


Do What You Must

by grumpyphoenix



Series: Brain Salad [20]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark!Castiel, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 07:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16035359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpyphoenix/pseuds/grumpyphoenix
Summary: Castiel will do what it takes to make Dean whole.





	Do What You Must

**Author's Note:**

> 10 years of Castiel - kind of a prompt. It's 3am, so... forgive the extra not beta-ness.

In the end, Dean just couldn’t kick Michael out. He’d always fallen for the mind control thing easily. Cursed ghost coin, wicked witch, Djinn dream, whatever; Dean always longed for someone else to take the wheel from him. It was the paradox hiding in the core of his personality: A control freak who wanted nothing more but to let go. Michael had double crossed him, and he cared, but he still couldn’t summon the force of personality to kick him out or control him the way Sam had with Lucifer. 

While the Michael from his world  had thought of Dean as nothing more than an object to be manipulated, this one had spent too long fighting with humans to have that opinion. In a terrible way, he was more like Lucifer than any other angel they’d met. He  _ got  _ Dean, almost instantly, enough to understand that Dean was more than adept at creating his own prison. All the Archangel needed to keep him truly bound was to follow the subconscious directions  he was given by his host.

It lasted a long time. Long enough for Sam to give up. Castiel watched him slowly stop caring.  As Michael took over heaven and started making angels, Sam researched. Angels started hunting Castiel with a fanatical fury, but Sam held the course. The world started to suffer as the angels took over, and Sam lost his faith, slowly. No matter how many times they were able to confront MIchael, Dean was unreachable inside his self imposed nightmare.  Dean was unreachable, but he could still fucking feel his tortured longing every single minute of every day. Sam’s mental breakdown made him want to give in to despair himself.

Sam stopped eating, and then sleeping became either an all day affair, or something that he went without for far too long. When he stopped shaving, he also stopped researching. And being sober. In the end, it was Rowena and Bobby who came up with the solution. Castiel used himself as bait to pull Michael to him.

The fight was intense, but once MIchael realized that he was being forced into the world with no magic, he fled Dean’s body in a panic. Dean, reeling from everything, teetered, and fell through. Castiel, yelling for them to keep it open as long as possible, jumped through to grab him. With Dean cradled in his arms, he looked through it at Rowena chanting. Sam, a shadow of his former self, fiercely helping by her side. Castiel picked up a loose rock, and chucked it through, hitting Rowena and making her falter.

Dean has no idea, and Castiel doesn’t tell him. He should feel guilty, he knows that. The world is probably in a shambles. Michael is a nigh unstoppable force, and there’s no way, save the re-emergence of Lucifer or his Father, for them to win. Some nights, he struggles with it. He can’t sleep, thinking about Sam and Jack, worrying about how they will fare in their post-Michael world. Other nights, tangled up in sheets, sweat and come drying on his skin, he doesn’t care. He looks over at Dean, bathed in moonlight, asleep and happy. In this world, Dean has nothing to do but exist.  Here, Cas is human. They have a home. A small garden. Dean has a job, and he’s finally stopped putting holy water under his bed. It isn’t even holy anyway. It’s just water. There is nothing to fight and nothing to kill.Dean is worried about his brother, but there’s no way to open the portal from this side. All they can do is wait. So they do, and in the meantime, Dean’s eyes have lost their haunted look. He smiles, he loves Castiel. They get married in Vegas, making Dean cry for the lack of his brother, but it’s bittersweet at this point, and Castiel holds him and loves him. Making the portal over here was hard. Sam’s just looking for a way to make it happen. Castiel is sure of it, and soon, so is Dean.

Castiel should feel awful, but if he’s honest, he doesn’t. It’s been years now, and he’s long since buried the evidence. Two states away, and Dean accepted his excuse. He’d wanted to see the ocean, but Dean had work, and anyway...there’s nothing in this world for him to fear. Two states away meant the everything smelled awful by the time he got there, which would never have happened back home. Everything works differently here, but there is one thing he knows: Weight holds a body down  no matter what world you’re in. At least here he doesn’t need to burn it. No ghosts.

Sam is never coming. Castiel should feel scoured with guilt, but he doesn’t. He makes sure to clean the blood off his wedding ring before he goes home.


End file.
